Principal Software Engineer
Australia
About BHP
At BHP we support our people to grow, learn, develop their skills and reach their potential. With a global portfolio of operations, we offer a diverse and inclusive environment with extraordinary career opportunities. Our strategy is to focus on creating a safe work environment where our employees feel strongly connected to our values and objectives, and where the capability of our people is key to our success.
Come and be a part of this success.
About the Role
The Principal Software Engineering role provides senior technical leadership across multiple software delivery squads within Copper SA. The role is responsible for driving engineering excellence, guiding technical direction, and supporting the delivery of high quality digital solutions across the Copper SA product ecosystem.
This position blends hands on software engineering with influential technical leadership. The role provides deep expertise across the full stack (C#/.NET and React), supports solution architecture, and works across teams to uplift engineering practices, unblock complex technical challenges, and ensure alignment with strategic digital objectives.
Working in close partnership with the Lead Technical Management, Principal Platform Engineering, Principal Data Engineering, solution architects and business stakeholders, this role sets and maintains engineering standards, promotes sustainable delivery approaches, and champions modern software development practices.
Key Responsibilities:
- Drive technical decision making, engineering patterns, and best practice frameworks across multiple squads.
- Bring deep full‑stack engineering expertise to support design decisions, guide code-level implementation, and improve the technical maturity of both frontend and backend software development.
- Provide architectural guidance across backend, frontend, integrations, and cloud services to ensure scalable, secure, and reliable solutions.
- Partner with platform and data leaders to align software architecture with cloud, data, and enterprise architectural direction.
- Lead technical design reviews, architecture discussions, and solution planning sessions.
- Operate as a floating senior technical expert across squads, taking ownership of high complexity tasks and unblocking engineering challenges.
- Contribute hands on to codebases (C#/.NET, React), technical spikes, proofs of concept, and critical-path implementation tasks.
- Pair with engineers to uplift delivery capability, improve code quality, and promote modern engineering techniques.
- Champion engineering operating practices including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, security-by-design, and cloud native development.
- Coaching, Mentoring & Capability Development
- Support the growth of engineers through technical coaching, pairing, and capability uplift plans.
- Foster a collaborative engineering culture that encourages continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and consistent technical standards.
- Provide guidance on complex technical issues, design options, and trade off considerations.Support the improvement of Scrum/Agile maturity, including refinement of ceremonies, prioritisation practices, and flow of work discipline
- Identify systemic engineering gaps across squads and lead uplift initiatives that strengthen development discipline, consistency, and long‑term maintainability.
- Identify opportunities to improve developer experience, platform tooling, and workflow efficiency across squads.
- Influence without authority - this role does not have direct people leadership but requires strong engagement and technical leadership.
About You
- Engineering patterns, architectural decisions, and technical standards are consistently applied across squads, resulting in scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions aligned with Digital Australia technical direction.Visible uplift in engineering capability through mentoring, pairing, and guidance—demonstrated by improved code quality, stronger technical decision‑making within squads, and reduced reliance on senior escalation.
- Improved delivery outcomes through stronger engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, observability, secure‑by‑design), evidenced by fewer defects, more predictable delivery, and early identification and mitigation of technical risks.
- Increased alignment and consistency across squads in engineering approaches, shared patterns, and technology decisions, resulting in reduced rework, greater reuse, and clearer architectural coherence.
- High‑complexity technical work and delivery blockers are resolved efficiently, enabling squads to maintain momentum and meet delivery commitments without sustained disruption.
- High confidence from platform, data, architecture, and delivery stakeholders in the role’s technical leadership, evidenced by predictable decision‑making, transparent trade‑offs, and clear articulation of technical value and risks.
- Expertise across the full stack (C#/.NET and React),
About Our Process
At BHP, we are committed to employing individuals who align with the BHP Charter Values and meet the requirements of the role. As part of the recruitment process, there are a number of checks which may be conducted to demonstrate applicants suitability for a role including police / criminal background checks, medical, drug and alcohol testing, due diligence checks, right to work checks, and/or reference checks.
If you are already employed directly by BHP, please log in using your BHP email address or apply via our internal jobs portal.
Supporting a Diverse Workforce
The size, stability and magnitude of our business not only provides significant opportunity for professional development, but also attractive salary packages with performance-based bonuses and a best-in-class employee share program. We know there are many aspects of our employees' lives that are important, and work is only one of these, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits include flexible working options, a generous paid parental leave policy, other extended leave entitlements and parent rooms.
At BHP, we know that we are strengthened by diversity. We are an Equal Opportunity employer that is committed to making BHP a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and be at their best every day. We are focused on creating a workforce that’s more diverse and represents the communities where we work and live. providing a work environment in which everyone is included, treated fairly and with respect. We are an Equal Opportunity employer and recognise that true diversity includes gender, age, race, disability status, sexual orientation, religion, neurodiversity, education levels, and many more aspects of your identity.
BHP is committed to providing a recruitment process that is fair, equitable and accessible for all. If you have a disability, we know that it may be helpful for us to adjust our process to make it equitable for your individual situation. If you would like to reach out to someone about your situation and our recruitment process, please email us at inclusion@bhp.com.